Neufeld Scheck & Brustin, LLP

Peter Neufeld

Peter Neufeld is one of the firm’s founding partners.  He has over thirty years of trial experience, and enjoys a national reputation as a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer.  Mr. Neufeld has successfully tried cases and argued appeals in state and federal courts nationwide, and has obtained numerous substantial verdicts and settlements on behalf of victims of police misconduct and wrongful convictions.  His cases have led to important systemic reforms in the areas of criminal justice and police practices.

In addition to his civil rights practice at NSB, Mr. Neufeld, along with NSB partner Barry Scheck, co-founded and co-directs The Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.  The Project currently represents hundreds of inmates seeking post-conviction release through DNA testing. Since its founding, the Innocence Project has been responsible in whole or in part for exonerating most of the men and women to be cleared through post-conviction DNA testing, a total of 267 and counting.  Today, the Innocence Project includes a broad network of clinics across the country.

Mr. Neufeld has received numerous awards and honors including, for example, the 2009 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law (with his partner Barry Scheck); The Norman S. Ostrow Award from The New York Counsel of Defense Lawyers in 2007; the University of Virginia School of Law, William J. Brennan, Jr. Award in 2006; named one of the 100 Best Lawyers over several years; Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, Trial Lawyer of the Year Finalist in 2002; The Charles W. Froessel Award, Distinguished Service to the Legal Community in 2001; the New York Civil Liberties Union, Florina Lasker Award in 2001; the New York Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Thurgood Marshall Award in 2001; the New York Civil Liberties Union, The Jerry Bishop Guardian of Liberty Award in 2001; The American Society of Criminology, President’s Award in 2001; Runner Up for National Law Journal Lawyer of the Year in 2000; the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Gideon Award in 2000; The Legal Aid Society, Outstanding Commitment to Human Rights award in 2000; The American Ethical Union, Elliott-Black Award in 2000; the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, Significant Contributions of Criminal Justice award in 2000; the Southern Center for Human Rights, Equal Justice Award in 2000; and the New York University School of Law, and the Public Interest Foundation award in 1999.

Mr. Neufeld taught trial advocacy for several years at Fordham University Law School.  He also has taught extensively on the intersection of science and law, including the proper use of expert witnesses. His articles on these subjects appear in both science and law publications. He has lectured on civil rights and criminal justice before legal and scientific organizations, state commissions and bar associations, and has taught continuing legal education programs for judges and lawyers across the country as well as abroad, on the subjects of forensic science, expert witnesses and cross examination. Mr. Neufeld, along with NSB partner Barry Scheck and Jim Dwyer of the New York Times, is also the author of “Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution, and Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted,” published in 2000.

Mr. Neufeld serves on the Board of Trustees for Montefiore Medical Center, the Albert Einstein School of Medicine and the Abelard Foundation.  He is also a member of the New York State Commission on Forensic Science, which is responsible for regulating all state and local crime laboratories.

Prior to entering private practice, Mr. Neufeld was a staff attorney for many years with The Legal Aid Society in the Bronx.  He received his law degree in 1975 from New York University School of Law and his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1972.

Barry Scheck

Barry Scheck is one of the firm’s founding partners.  He has more than thirty years of trial experience in state and federal courts nationwide. Mr. Scheck enjoys a national reputation as a criminal defense and civil rights trial lawyer, and has successfully tried cases and argued appeals in state and federal courts around the country. Mr. Scheck’s criminal and civil trials have redefined and expanded the rights of victims of police misconduct and wrongful convictions throughout the United States.

In addition to his civil rights practice at NSB, Mr. Scheck is also a Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.  In his thirty-one years in the Cardozo faculty, he has served as the Director of Clinical Education, Co-Director of the Trial Advocacy Programs, and the Jacob Burns Center for the Study of Law and Ethics.

Mr. Scheck, along with NSB partner Peter Neufeld co-directs The Innocence Project at Cardozo. The Project currently represents hundreds of inmates seeking post-conviction release through DNA testing. Since its founding, The Innocence Project has been responsible in whole or in part for exonerating most of the more than 250 hundred men to be cleared through post-conviction DNA testing.  Today, Innocence Project includes a broad network of clinics across the country.

Over the years Mr. Scheck has received numerous honors and awards for his trial work and advocacy including—with his partner Peter Neufeld—the 2009 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law; the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers—Thurgood Marshall Award in 2001; the New York Civil Liberties Union Florina Lasker Award, “for courage in the defense of civil liberties” in 2001; the National Law Journal Runner-up for Lawyer of the Year in 2000, the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers “Gideon Award” in 2000; the Southern Center for Human Rights Equal Justice Award in 2000; the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services Distinguished Defense Attorney Award in 1999; the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Robert C. Heeney Award for recognition of outstanding contributions in 1996; and the New York State Bar Association Charles F. Crimi Memorial Award for outstanding practitioner in 1995.  Mr. Scheck was named one of the National Law Journal’s 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2006.

Mr. Scheck has taught trial practice, appellate advocacy, legal ethics and instructed on the forensic sciences to judges, lawyers and students nationwide. For example, Mr. Scheck has been an instructor at the National College of Criminal Defense Lawyers, NITA, and the NAACP annual training seminar for death penalty lawyers, and has been retained to train lawyers in trial practice at major law firms including Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP; Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP; and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.

Mr. Scheck has been a Commissioner of the New York State Forensic Science Review Board since 1994, a Commissioner of the National Institute of Justice Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence from 1997-2000, an Advisor for AGID-Lab since 2001, and on the advisory board for Celera Genetic, Project to Identify Dead at World Trade Center.  Mr. Scheck is an active member and the past president (2004-2005) of the National Associations of Criminal Defense Lawyers.  From 1995-1997 he served on the American Bar Association Special President’s Commission on High Profile Trials.  He was recently appointed by Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice to sit on the Friedman Case Review Panel, an independent panel of legal and social science experts charged with reviewing the case of Jesse Friedman.

Mr. Scheck also has published extensively on a variety of legal issues ranging from trial practice to forensic science.  Along with NSB partner Peter Neufeld and Jim Dwyer of the New York Times, he is the author of “Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution, and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted,” published in 2000.

Prior to becoming a law professor and entering private practice, Mr. Scheck was a staff attorney with The Legal Aid Society in the Bronx.  He is a Graduate of the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley, and a graduate of Yale University with a B.A. in American Studies/Economics.

Nick Brustin

Nick Brustin, a partner in the firm, has broad experience in federal and state trial and appellate courts in New York and throughout the country. Mr. Brustin’s civil rights practice principally involves representing individual plaintiffs nationwide who have been the victims of police brutality or other official misconduct, and individuals who have been wrongfully convicted and incarcerated. Mr. Brustin also represents victims of employment and other forms of discrimination as well as those injured through corporate malfeasance.

Mr. Brustin has obtained some of the largest verdicts and settlements ever awarded in police misconduct cases, as well as substantial injunctive relief in police departments nationwide. For example, in 2010, Mr. Brustin obtained the largest individual settlement ever paid by New York City on behalf of Barry Gibbs, a Brooklyn postal worker who spent more than 19 years in prison for a murder he did not commit as a result of individual misconduct and systemic corruption in the New York City Police Department.  In 2008, Mr. Brustin negotiated 2008′s largest settlement against the New York City Police Department on behalf of Hector Gonzalez, a man who spent more than 6 years in prison for a crime he did not commit as a result of misconduct by NYPD officers and detectives.  In 2006, Mr. Brustin successfully litigated and then obtained a multi-million dollar jury verdict in federal court in Indiana on behalf of Larry Mayes, an African-American man who spent more than 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit as a result of individual and systemic police misconduct in the Hammond Police Department.

Mr. Brustin currently is representing victims of police misconduct and those who have been wrongfully convicted in New York, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, Washington, Michigan and Washington, D.C. Mr. Brustin also was an adjunct professor of law at Fordham University School of Law and has lectured on civil rights issues, including at the annual NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Civil Rights Conference and various civil rights continuing education seminars around the country. In 2011, Mr. Brustin was selected as a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School.

Before joining the Firm, Mr. Brustin was an Honors Program Trial Attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, where he worked on school desegregation cases including the DOJ’s successful efforts to integrate The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. Mr. Brustin also was associated with Beldock, Levine & Hoffman where he focused on civil rights and employment discrimination litigation including the firm’s class action race discrimination lawsuit against the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

Mr. Brustin received his law degree from Fordham University School of Law, a Masters Degree in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and his undergraduate degree from Brown University.

Mr. Brustin can be reached at nick@nsbcivilrights.com.

Debi Cornwall

Debi Cornwall joined NSB in 2001 and became a partner in 2006.  In the last decade she has successfully litigated civil-rights cases at both the trial and appellate levels around the country on behalf of DNA exonerees and victims of police and prison brutality.  For example:

In 2011, along with Peter Neufeld, Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann and Cochran Fellow Sandy Henderson, Ms. Cornwall won a seminal victory in New York’s Court of Appeals on behalf of Douglas Warney, who spent more than nine years in prison after falsely confessing to a murder he did not commit.  The Court of Appeals unanimously held that an innocent claimant’s false confession is not his “own conduct” barring compensation under New York’s Unjust Conviction Act if the confession is attributable to police coercion or manipulation such as feeding facts.  The Court further clarified the legal standards for pleading, assessing a motion to dismiss, and causation in these cases.

In 2009, along with Barry Scheck, Ms. Cornwall won a $10.7 million verdict on behalf of Betty Anne Waters for the wrongful conviction and  imprisonment of her deceased brother, Kenny, in Massachusetts.

In 2007, Ms. Cornwall, along with Peter Neufeld, obtained a jury award on behalf of Herman Atkins, a black man falsely convicted of raping a white woman.  In awarding Ms. Cornwall her full requsted fee, the Atkins court noted that the case “involved complex and novel issues of criminal procedure, constitutional law, tort law and governmental immunities. Plaintiff’s briefs and oral arguments were excellently presented and, during the trial, the Court found Plaintiff’s attorneys exceedingly well-prepared and skilled at trial litigation . . .  Plaintiff’s attorneys did an excellent job trying this complicated, difficult case.  Their experience, reputation and skill are all considerable . . . .”

In 2006, Ms. Cornwall, with Peter Neufeld, obtained the first-ever wrongful conviction verdict from a federal jury in Virginia on behalf of Earl Washington Jr., a mentally retarded man who falsely confessed to a murder he did not commit.  The Washington litigation resulted in a sweeping forensic audit of the Virginia state crime lab.

Ms. Cornwall has also represented plaintiffs in Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas.  She is admitted to practice in New York, the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, and the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeal.

Ms. Cornwall also provides consulting services to other plaintiffs’ attorneys in civil rights cases.  She is currently retained to offer expert strategic guidance to plaintiffs’ counsel in a wrongful conviction action pending in federal court in the Southern District of Texas.  In 2008, she received the Thurgood Marshall Award from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York for her pro bono work on capital cases, and she is currently a board member of the National Police Accountability Project (NPAP).

Before joining NSB, Ms. Cornwall was a law clerk to the Honorable Robert W. Sweet in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.  She has also worked with the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, the Southern Center for Human Rights, and the Federal Defender Division of the Legal Aid Society in New York City.  She received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was the captain of the winning team in the final round of the Ames Moot Court Competition and represented indigent felony defendants through the Criminal Justice Institute.  Her undergraduate degree is from Brown University, magna cum laude and with honors.

Ms. Cornwall can be reached at debi@nsbcivilrights.com.

Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann

Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann joined NSB in 2006.  Since then, she has helped secure multi-million-dollar verdicts and settlements for innocent clients in cases involving the gamut of misconduct, including suggestive identifications, coerced and fabricated confessions, Brady violations, fabricated evidence, junk science, prosecutorial misconduct, and unconstitutional municipal practices.  She has litigated wrongful conviction and malicious prosecution claims in North Carolina, Louisiana, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, Kentucky, Florida and New York.  She also has taught continuing legal education on litigating wrongful conviction claims.

Ms. Hoffmann’s practice focuses on substantial legal writing and analysis in federal and state trial and appellate courts.  Recently, on a team with Peter Neufeld, Debi Cornwall and Cochran Fellow Sandy Henderson, she authored the briefs to New York’s highest court on behalf of Douglas Warney, a mentally ill and mentally retarded man who sought compensation for nine years spent imprisoned for a murder he did not commit.  Lower courts had rejected his compensation claim on the basis that, because he had falsely confessed, Warney had caused his own conviction.  In a landmark 2011 ruling, the Court of Appeals reinstated Warney’s claim, holding that where police feed nonpublic facts to an innocent suspect and then falsely claim those facts originated with him, the police have effectively coerced the confession. 

Before joining NSB, Ms. Hoffmann clerked for the late Honorable Reginald C. Lindsay of the District of Massachusetts. In 2004 she graduated third in her class from New York University School of Law, magna cum laude and Order of the Coif, where she received the Benjamin F. Butler Memorial Award for “unusual distinction in scholarship, character and professional activities.” While in law school, Ms. Hoffmann worked in NYU’s Capital Defender Clinic at the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama. She interned at the Innocence Project, Legal Aid Society Criminal Defense Division in Manhattan, the CPCS Public Defender Division in Cambridge, and NSB.  Ms. Hoffmann graduated from Harvard College in 2000.

Ms. Hoffmann is admitted to practice in New York, Massachusetts, the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the District of Massachusetts, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ms. Hoffmann can be reached at anna@nsbcivilrights.com.

Emma Freudenberger

Since joining NSB in 2008, Emma Freudenberger has won substantial verdicts and settlements on behalf of civil rights plaintiffs in jurisdictions around the country. In 2011, with Nick Brustin and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, Ms. Freudenberger secured the first ever jury award in New Jersey for Section 1983 loss of life damages on behalf of the estate and children of Emil Mann, Sr., a Native American man fatally shot by State Parks Police. In 2010, with Barry Scheck and Nick Brustin, Ms. Freudenberger secured the largest individual settlement in New York City history on behalf of Barry Gibbs, a former Brooklyn postal worker wrongfully convicted of murder because of individual and systemic misconduct at the NYPD. In 2009, with Barry Scheck and co-counsel Susman Godfrey LLP, Ms. Freudenberger successfully litigated and won a multi-million dollar judgment in federal court against the City of Houston on behalf of George Rodriguez, whose wrongful conviction for rape and subsequent seventeen years imprisonment were caused by gross supervisory failures and systemic misconduct at the now-notorious Houston Police Department Crime Lab. Also in 2009, with Nick Brustin and co-counsel Glenn A. Garber, P.C., Ms. Freudenberger won one of the highest damages awards ever secured under New York State’s Unjust Conviction Act on behalf of Hector Gonzalez, who spent nearly six years in prison for murder before an investigation by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York established his innocence and identified the true perpetrator. Ms. Freudenberger has experience managing every stage of complex constitutional litigation from the pleadings phase through trial, including taking depositions, all aspects of discovery and motion practice, and comprehensive mediations and settlement negotiations. 

Prior to joining NSB, Ms. Freudenberger served as the death penalty clerk for the Supreme Court of New Jersey. In 2007, she graduated from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, a Charles Evans Hughes fellow, and recipient of the Valentin J.T. Wertheimer Prize and the New York State Bar Association’s 2007 Law Student Legal Ethics Award. She also has worked at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, the Immigration Law Unit of the Legal Aid Society, the Committee for the Administration of Justice in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and the Vera Institute of Justice.

Ms. Freudenberger was Editor-in-Chief of A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual and oversaw publication of its Seventh Edition. With Susan Sturm, Jean Howard, and Eddie Jauregui, she is a co-author of Linking Mobilization to Institutional Power: The Faculty-Led Diversity Initiative at Columbia in Doing Diversity in Higher Education, Rutgers University Press, 2008. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 2001.

Ms. Freudenberger is admitted to practice in New York, the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Ms. Freudenberger can be reached at emma@nsbcivilrights.com.

Chloe Cockburn

Ms. Cockburn joined NSB as a Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. Fellow in 2010. From 2007-2008, she served as a fellow in the General Counsel’s office at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, where she assisted in designing significant reforms of the New Orleans criminal justice system. In 2008-2009, Ms. Cockburn clerked for the Honorable Charles P. Sifton of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. From 2009-2010, Ms. Cockburn held the Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellowship in civil liberties at the ACLU Racial Justice Program. At the ACLU, she assisted in litigation in Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, Idaho, Texas, and Michigan. In 2007, Ms. Cockburn graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she served on the Executive Board of the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, was a teaching assistant for Professors Lani Guinier and Charles Nesson, represented indigent clients through the Criminal Justice Institute, and received public interest and writing fellowships. She interned with Attorney Robert McDuff in Jackson, Mississippi, and for the Public Defender Service of Washington D.C. Ms. Cockburn graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with an A.B. in Classics and Studio Art in 2001.

Ms. Cockburn is admitted to practice in New York and the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.

Ms. Cockburn can be reached at chloe@nsbcivilrights.com.

Sandy Henderson

Mr. Henderson joined NSB as a Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. Fellow in 2010. He previously clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2009, Mr. Henderson graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. While in law school, he served as an Articles Editor of the Harvard Law Review and represented indigent defendants as a participant in the Criminal Justice Institute. Additionally, he was a research assistant to Professor Carol Steiker and Professor Vicki Jackson and won an Oberman Award in Constitutional Law. He interned with the Appellate and Supreme Court practice group at Mayer Brown, at Jenner & Block and at Paul Weiss. Mr. Henderson graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Economics and Classical Studies and has an M.A. and an M.Phil in Political Science from Yale University.

Mr. Henderson is admitted to practice in New York and the United States District Courts for the Southern, Eastern and Western Districts of New York.

Mr. Henderson can be reached at sandy@nsbcivilrights.com.

Vanessa Buch

Vanessa Buch joined NSB as a Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. Fellow in 2011 after clerking for the Hon. Jon O. Newman of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Hon. Andrew L. Carter of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Prior to clerking, Ms. Buch spent five years as a staff attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights representing clients on death row in Alabama and Georgia in state post-conviction and federal habeas proceedings. In 2003, Ms. Buch graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School where she represented indigent clients through the Criminal Justice Institute, was a research assistant to Professors Carol Steiker and Stephen Bright, and was awarded a Kauffman Fellowship. Ms. Buch graduated from the University of Virginia in 1999 with a B.A. in Religious Studies.

Ms. Buch is admitted to practice in New York, Georgia, Alabama and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Ms. Buch can be reached at vanessa@nsbcivilrights.com